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　　LETTER 378

　　CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN AITKEN

　　Colebrooke Cottage, Islington, July 5, 1825.

　　DEAR Sir,—With thanks for your last No. of the Cabinet— as I cannot arrange with a London publisher to reprint "Rosamund Gray" as a book, it will be at your service to admit into the Cabinet as soon as you please. Your h'ble serv't, CH's LAMB.

　　EMMA, eldest of your name,

　　Meekly trusting in her God

　　Midst the red-hot plough-shares trod,

　　And unscorch'd preserved her fame.

　　By that test if you were tried,

　　Ugly names might be defied;

　　Though devouring fire's a glutton,

　　Through the trial you might go

　　'On the light fantastic toe,'

　　Nor for plough-shares care a BUTTON.

　　[Aitken was an Edinburgh bookseller who edited The Cabinet; or, The Selected Beauties of Literature, 1824, 1825 and 1831. The particular interest of the letter is that it shows Lamb to have wanted to publish Rosamund Gray a third time in his life. Hitherto we had only his statement that Hessey said that the world would not bear it. Aitken printed the story in The Cabinet for 1831. Previously he had printed "Dream Children" and "The Inconveniences of being Hanged."

　　I have been told (but have had no opportunity of verifying the statement) that the Buttons, for one of whom the appended acrostic was written, were cousins of the Lambs.

　　Here should come an unpublished letter to Miss Kelly thanking her for tickets and saying that Liston is to produce Lamb's farce "The Pawnbroker's Daughter," which "will take."

　　Here should come a letter from Lamb to Hone, dated Enfield, July 25, 1825. Lamb had written some quatrains to the editor of the Every-Day Book, which were printed in the London Magazine for May, 1825. Hone copied them into his periodical, accompanied by a reply. Lamb began:—

　　I like you, and your book, ingenuous Hone!

　　Hone's reply contained the sentiment:—

　　I am "ingenuous": it is all I can

　　Pretend to; it is all I wish to be.

　　See the Every-Day Book, Vol. I., July 9. Hone at this time was occupying Lamb's house at Colebrooke Row, while the Lambs were staying at the Allsops' lodgings at Enfield.

　　Lamb again refers to "The Pawnbroker's Daughter." He says it is at the theatre now and Harley is there too. This would be John Pritt Harley, the actor. The play, as it happened, was never acted.

　　Here should come three notes to Thomas Allsop in July and August, 1825, one of which damns the afternoon sun. Given in the Boston Bibliophile edition.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6